


Perspectives: a Little Blade sidefic

by lilflowerpot



Series: Half-Galra Disaster Gays™ Do Their Best While Dealing With Trauma & the Universe's Worst Daddy Issues [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, I'll add more tags as more perspectives are added, So here we are, and they have too much love (and concern) for Keith, because apparently I'm too much of an arsehole to keep my self-indulgent BS contained to one story, even if said story is already WAY longer than it was ever intended to be, hear me out: I have too much love for every single member of Team Voltron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 16:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15999275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilflowerpot/pseuds/lilflowerpot
Summary: If you haven't read Little Blade then please do! I promise you that without it, this will make approximately no sense whatsoever.Basically this is an on-going collection of what other characters (ie. everyone who is not a beautiful half-galra boy) thinks of the Disaster Gays™ as they do their best to maybe be a little less tragic than they unavoidably are. Why am I writing this when doing so meant chapter 11 took me a full month, you ask? Because I have exceedingly poor self-control, that's why, you're welcome.





	Perspectives: a Little Blade sidefic

Lotor doesn’t like her.

Pidge thinks that’s fair, she’s not exactly kissing the ground he walks on either, but the love lost between them isn’t what worries her.

Lotor _does_ like Keith.

The first time she sees it is in the library, when they go to question the Prince on his ship’s sentience - because how he’s managed that she just _has_ to know - and Lotor starts spewing his usual flowery bullshit. The “brains and beauty of Voltron,” he calls them, and really Pidge doesn’t think much of it until Lotor’s insistence on learning Keith’s name registers as more than just a false pleasantry.

He genuinely wants to know, she thinks, as Zarkon’s flesh and blood leers at Keith with sweet words and barely concealed intrigue.

It’s a rare thing, that Pidge finds herself completely unsure of what to do, but Lotor’s caught her off-guard. She’d been prepared for him to make this difficult, of course: to toy with them for his own entertainment, or maybe even attack them outright (and Keith can say what he likes about Lotor not _really_ stealing his knife with intentions to maim, but she has a sneaking suspicion that Keith’s time with the Blade has somewhat skewed his perspective on normality), but she hadn’t at all thought to prepare for… this.

This being Keith leaning in, _towards_ Lotor rather than away from him as any sane person would do, and mimicking that same intrigued growl that the Prince had used as he tells him to “earn it.”

What the fuck.

She looks at Keith, whose eyes are bright and laughing in a way she’s rarely seen.

She looks at Lotor, who seems almost as shell-shocked as she is.

Back to Keith: all sharp edges and adrenalin.

Back to Lotor: something dark, and heated, and dangerous, but worse than that there’s a sort of thrill behind his look, and this is where Pidge comes to her first Great Epiphany of the day which… Fine. Okay. So Lotor likes Keith in some sort of deeply concerning, looks-like-he’s-going-to-eat-him-alive, kind of way.

“You have a smart mouth, Paladin, but very well. Ask what you will, and I shall prove myself _worthy_ of your introduction.”

Pidge feels the gentle nudge to her side, and turns to find Keith looking at her with a half-smile and something far worse behind his gaze.

“Okay,” she hears herself say, as the second Great Epiphany descends upon her like a particularly malicious version of her Grandmother at Thanksgiving, “so we’ve been looking at your ship.”

The rest of the words come on auto-pilot, because before everything else she’s a Paladin of Voltron, and she has a damn job to do, but Great Epiphany number two still ricochets off the inside of her skull with increasing velocity.

Keith likes Lotor.

 

So the situation isn’t ideal.

“He knows a hell of a lot more about the Lions than we do,” she explains to Hunk, and can’t really blame him for the look of utter mistrust he shoots her, “besides, I don’t fancy trying to put his ship back together again, but if he does it, and it kills him in the process, then that’s one less thing to worry about.”

All technically true.

Now, Pidge likes Hunk. He’s fast become one of the closest friends she’s ever had in her entire life, second only to Matt, and she very genuinely values his input, which isn’t something she can say about most people.

His failing, however, is that he’s deeply emotional.

She’s sure he’d say that her failing is the exact opposite - though, for Hunk, perhaps ‘failing’ would be too harsh a word when describing a friend - but at this moment in time Pidge thinks that the best course of action is to observe the behaviour of her subjects with as little active disturbance as possible, and if Hunk even suspects her of allowing Keith to continue in what she knows is, at best, a delicate situation and, at worst, a volatile one, for the sake of better understanding Lotor’s inner workings, he’ll probably try to stop her.

Ultimately, the decision is to keep the last varga’s bizarre realisations to herself.

Wrapping up her summary of rift-creatures and Altean voodoo, Pidge turns back to Keith only to find Keith no longer there.

Fuck.

He’s with Lotor because _of course he is_ , the Prince fussing over his ship’s inner workings while Keith stands by silently as he so often does: arms crossed, face blank, gaze steadfast. Keith’s always been kind of intense, in a brooding, anime-protagonist kind of way, but now she’s really paying attention, he’s sort of soft too. His signature scowl doesn’t really seem all that frowny, and although the fact that he hasn’t blinked once in the past three dobashes is unnerving, if Pidge is honest with herself, Keith’s silent vigil has always been something of a comfort.

It’s just _weird_ to see him so fixated on Lotor.

Keith must feel her staring, because he looks up as if she’d spoken, tilting his head in question, to which she replies with a silent, “later.” He accepts it despite his obvious confusion, and she manages to prompt Hunk into approaching Lotor if only to prevent Keith from thinking about it too deeply.

She watches the ensuing chaos with the removed mentality of a scientist, but when Lotor starts playing mind-games with Hunk it’s an internal battle not to physically knock him down a peg.

He’s such an _ass_.

And then Keith’s calling him _mean_ , of all things, and Lotor doesn’t look like he knows what to do with himself.

“You’re better than this,” Keith says to him, and Pidge can’t believe that, but there’s a sincerity to those words and she knows Keith’s no liar. He genuinely believes it. She wonders if Lotor does, but when she looks, she can’t read him, his expression helpless in a way that her mind can’t compute.

Then he straightens, _sharpens_ , and Pidge remembers who they’re dealing with.

She remembers to be afraid.

 

Lotor’s intimidation tactics are numerous - and worse yet, subtle in a way that means she can’t really call him out on it - but Pidge draws the line at seeing Zarkon’s son sling the first of his ship’s repaired engines up onto his shoulder like it’s nothing, because she knows for a fact that it must weigh as much as a small car, and he’s not even breaking a sweat.

(As a side note, she resolves herself to find out if Galra _can_ sweat, or if tampering with their cooling systems might be an effective method of sabotage.)

It’s a comfort to see Keith scowling at Lotor as if he’d stepped in something foul; or, at least, it is until she teases him about it that evening, and Keith confesses to wanting to _bite_ the Prince - “but not hurt him,” he clarifies, as if that makes it better rather than worse somehow - and she really doesn’t know how to explain to him that that’s just not a normal urge.

Or not a human one, anyway.

He seems to know that, because he specifies “it’s a Galra thing,” in that quietly guilty tone he’s taken to using whenever mentioning his non-human half, as if verbalising it is taboo. Pidge doesn’t agree, but she’s a little preoccupied in trying to connect the dots to reassure him, because somehow the concept of Keith having inherently Galra instincts despite not having been raised around them had, until now, passed her by.

And if it’s not just instincts, but behaviours, then it’s not impossible that Lotor might have picked up on it.

“Rhyahl,” Lotor has taken to calling him, because Keith has sense enough to commit to his unmasked anonymity, lest his heritage be revealed. Pidge had been inclined to believe it was just a Galra name chosen at random - a noun, certainly, because it doesn’t translate - but seeing as it’s quickly become apparent that Lotor doesn’t _just_ do anything, his every action too careful, too deliberate, she is forced to admit that perhaps Lotor choosing a _Galra_ name hits too close to home.

A good scientist doesn’t work with assumed truths, so Pidge takes it upon herself to fact-check.

 

She’s hesitant to call it vulpine, though anatomically it _is_ , even despite the additional set of limbs, but a more appropriate descriptor eludes her. Pidge watches as the creature prowls - and there’s really no other word for it - towards her with a surety to its gait that would be alarming had she not enabled child-safety mode after the Klanmüirl incident.

“Rhyahl,” the automated voice intones, its pronunciation identical to Lotor’s, leaving no question as to whether this creature is that which the Prince has, for some reason, decided to name Keith after.

It’s the _why_ that she’s yet to pin down.

As it draws closer, what Pidge had mistaken for oddly-textured fur becomes aparant as an armor of little layered scales: wine-dark, translucent, and almost feathered at the edges. They ripple over flesh as it moves, fracturing the light and causing the resultant shadows to converge and swell with each step, and despite knowing that the creature is a hologram, Pidge is overcome by the irrational urge to smooth her hand over its flank.

It’s pretty, she thinks, idly, in a ‘this thing is absolutely a deadly alien predator’ sort of way.

It pauses, looks at her dead-on, and ridiculously she feels as if she’s just been spotted despite having made no attempt to hide in the first place. Five eyes seems an excessive amount, flowering out from the centre of its flat, shapeless skull in a pattern that’s uncomfortably familiar though she can’t quite place it, each one narrow and slitted: a deep honeyed gash with no discernible pupil. Now, with every single one fixed on her with an intensity she wasn’t prepared for, Pidge suddenly feels very small.

Vulnerable.

When it unhinges its jaw, it does so to release a great lolling mass of tongues; lengthy feathered things that writhe and coil as if they have a mind of their own, and Pidge can’t tear her gaze away. The beast doesn’t leap, doesn’t lunge, doesn’t do anything more that softly pad across the gap between them as if it has all the time in the world. Pidge knows - she _knows_ \- that if she were to stand up and run right this second, it would let her.

She doesn’t run.

She doesn’t do _anything_ , just sits there and lets those pale, coiling appendages caress her cheek, her jaw, her throat, until she’s all wrapped up in them and the creature is begging entry against her lips with a melodic crooning. It would be easy. So _so_ easy just to open her mouth and let it…

Let it?

“End program,” she croaks, and even as she does so can feel the phantom kiss of those tongues threatening to slip between her lips and surge down her throat.

“It was a hologram,” she tells the empty room, “it wasn’t real.”

She can’t bring herself to move for another varga.

 

She sticks to data pads, after that, though it’s far harder to gather data on an alien creature when she’s not quite sure how to spell its name in _English_ , let alone Galran.

She does find it though, eventually, and is surprised to learn that it was Daibazaal’s apex predator without contest: not even from the Galra. It doesn’t eat flesh, she learns, doesn’t really eat at all except to siphon quintessence off living beings and reduce them to absent husks: empty vessels devoid of life but not, technically, dead. Pidge finds herself almost thankful that King Alfor had destroyed the Galra homeworld, despite the obvious universal repercussions, because this thing _scares_ her.

It seemed familiar, she realises, because the druids fashion their masks after its skull, and this does nothing to comfort her. Keith seems to believe that Lotor hates the druids, but then why would the Prince choose a petname that has druidic significance?

The more Pidge reads, the worse she feels. Apparently the druids, before they were minions to Haggar, were a religious sect on Daibazaal. They worshiped these creatures, these Rhyahl, and made regular sacrifices - _Galra sacrifices_ \- to them as part of some sort of holy duty.

The logic to it is lost on her.

The piety is not.

However monstrous these beasts seem to her, they were sacred to the Galra. Though Pidge has no way of knowing whether that is still the case, she’s willing to bet that Lotor, hateful as he is, wouldn’t spit such sacrilege simply for his own amusement.

She’s still _missing_ something.

 

Even the patience of a saint has its limits, and it’s on the fifth quintent of their little arrangement that Hunk reaches his, demanding the answers Lotor had promised on day one.

Lotor doesn’t resist, which is mildly surprising, but he does answer Hunk’s momentary hesitation with sarcasm, which really isn’t.

Keith kicks him.

From across the room, Pidge witnesses it in slow motion: a sharp jab under the table, Keith’s left foot, curving into Lotor’s calf with deadly precision. A slight jolt runs through the Prince at the impact, his entire being drawing taught as his head snaps towards his assailant with seething insult carved into every line of his face.

Pidge reaches for her bayard, fingers creeping across the mountains of tech surrounding her slowly so as not to draw attention, and readies herself for a fight, because although Keith is wearing his oh-shit-I-definitely-didn’t-think-this-through expression, he’s not backing down, instead holding Lotor’s scowl with one of his own.

As quickly as it came on, Lotor’s rage recedes, a lightly amused sort of look taking its place.

It’s hard to say which scares Pidge more.

When he turns away from Keith with effortless poise, it’s to address Hunk as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

“Apologies, it seems I have yet to shake my unnecessary _meanness_. Do continue.”

Jesus Christ.

If Keith Kogane has a fucking death wish, then it’s six-foot-something of purple muscle with a tendency to smile as if it can imagine eighteen different ways for you to die, each more horrible than the last.

She tries to convey this to Keith through a silent glower, but he’s adamantly ignoring her, and Pidge can only keep this up for so long before Lotor is explaining his theory of Voltron and Sincline as hive-minded beings that are, themselves, only partial aspects of something much greater. It’s… incredible. Murderous quiznaker though he may be, she has to hand it to the Prince, his theories are _thrilling_.

So much so that Pidge mentally checks out of the conversation until Keith is speaking Galra words with a kind of reverb to them that human vocal chords are physically incapable of, and Lotor is leaning in, his praise sickly sweet in a way that _screams_ danger.

“You speak Zaalkh as if you were born to it.”

Pidge fists her hand into Keith’s shirt, silently demanding that he not rise to the bait because _for fucks sake Keith, he obviously wants something from you._ That word, _Zaalkh_ , is foreign to her, but contextually she’s got to assume that it’s whatever Galra dialect the names of Lotor’s ships come from, and it feels like Zarkon’s son is toeing the line of Keith’s parentage too closely.

“Indeed Rhyahl, I named them. _Kraliept tron Gamaar_ \- Knowledge is of Three Parts - it’s a rather well-known proverb stemming from Empress Marmora’s reign.”

At the mention of Marmora, Pidge feels her heart skip a beat, Keith himself tensing beneath her grip as if electrified, and she doesn’t know how to tell him to be less obvious without giving the whole damn game away.

“Yes, your little allies could likely tell you far more about their founder than I, but so far as your question I’m sure my knowledge on the topic shall suffice… Although, if you’re interested, I’d be more than willing to give you a history lesson or two.”

Pidge tightens her hold, but really, how does Shiro do it? Because Keith apparently has no intention of heeding her warnings, instead set on barrelling forward without even the slightest modicum of care for his own wellbeing.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that,” he says, tone flat despite the fact that he’s basically signing his soul away to the devil, “but first you’re going to explain your ships to us.”

Lotor complies easily, but Pidge doesn’t miss how his eyes flash with exhilaration at the prospect.

“As I’ve said, Knowledge is of Three Parts: the word, _Kraliept_ , is devised of three characters when written down.”

Pidge almost sighs in relief. Almost.

Then, without warning, Lotor is reaching towards Keith with an open palm, and asking “may I?” with faux innocence pasted on his features, as if he weren’t the literal spawn of Satan himself.

And Keith - _Keith_ , dumb stupid ridiculous boy that he is - accepts. Allows Lotor to take his hand, to tug him closer, to touch him as if he were some rare creature to be coveted, and Pidge half tries to pull him back before giving up altogether because clearly her attempts at damage control within whatever game of Lotor’s it is that they’re playing are all for naught.

The Prince begins to trace patterns on Keith’s inner wrist, his voice crooning and sweet and so outside of everything she would have imagined for Zarkon’s son before meeting him. The reality is decidedly worse, because mindgames are evidently what Lotor excels in, and of all of them Keith is the least equipped to deal with such underhanded tactics; in looking to Hunk, Pidge finds him just as impossibly helpless, and knows that they’re outmatched.

Lotor doesn’t just like Keith, he _wants_ him, and they’re powerless to stop it.

 

“I can’t believe Lance was right.”

Pidge is glad Hunk’s the one to admit it, because it means she doesn’t have to. The idea of Lotor adding Keith to his half-Galra harem was far more amusing in theory than it is in practise, and she hasn’t the foggiest idea of how to even _begin_ wrapping her mind around it.

But Matt might.

It’s late, and Matt’s supposed to be on duty right now so really she shouldn’t disturb him, but Pidge ignores her moral compass and whips out her little holographic communicator, beckoning Hunk over as it connects to its counterpart.

“You couldn’t just come find me?” is Matt’s amused greeting, but his expression quickly falls when he sees their grim faces, “what’s wrong?”

“Quick question: when you saw Lotor after the whole knife incident, how would you say he was acting around Keith?”

“He…” a heavy crease carves itself into Matt’s brow, and Pidge hates seeing her brother so serious, “if I say hungry is that going to sound weird?”

She shares a look with Hunk, and knows he’s just as disturbed as she is.

“No. It really _should_ , but no.”

“Is Keith okay?”

Pidge meets her brother’s concerned gaze through the screen, and wonders at the specificity of that question. Not ‘ _why are you asking_ ,’ or ‘ _what’s Lotor done now,_ ’ but a concern for Keith that feels as if she’s without all the information.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Hunk assures him, and Matt relaxes, “we’ve just been working on Lotor’s ship and there’s been some… er, tension?”

“Eye fucking.” Pidge interjects, tearing exclamations of horrified protest from both Hunk and her brother.

“Pidge!”

“Katie, no!”

“It’s _true_ ,” she insists, because it is, “Keith is pretty oblivious, but Lotor is laying it on so thick that it’s borderline obnoxious.”

“You’re sure he’s not just trying to mess with you?”

She makes a considering noise, “I mean, yeah, he definitely is, but there’s more to it than that.”

“Yeah man, if you’d seen him today?” Hunk cringes at the mere memory, “he spent like a solid ten dobashes just tracing patterns on Keith’s wrist which was weirdly tactile, but also Keith just let him do it? Which is definitely a hundred times weirder because he is _not_ a touchy-feely kind of guy.”

“He is actually,” Matt says it more as an afterthought to himself, but Pidge locks onto it immediately.

“What?”

“Keith, he’s… alright so he doesn’t come across as a cuddler. But Shiro definitely is, and whenever I saw them together back at the Garrison there was _always_ some sort of physical contact.” Matt shrugs, “and maybe that was just a Shiro-exception, I don’t know, but I’ve never known the guy to actually _reject_ physical affection. People just don’t usually initiate it because of his whole brooding bad-boy thing.”

And that’s… huh.

Pidge hadn’t really thought about it like that before, but come to think of it she’s never seen Keith react badly to team hugs, or Lance’s arm around his shoulders, or even Allura when she practically threw herself at him in apology the other night.

“Aw man,” Hunk is looking at her with those big brown eyes in a way that would melt anyone’s heart, “you don’t think Lotor’s seen that, do you? Like, what if Keith actually wants hugs and we’ve not been giving them to him, but now Lotor swoops in with his Galra mind-games and crazy manipulation skills, and is all obviously sweet on him, so Keith takes the bait?”

Pidge’s immediate response is to reject the possibility.

Logically, she knows it’s not so much a stretch as she’s perhaps like it to be, and the prospect of Keith being touch-starved isn’t one she’d considered, but if that’s true and it’s something that Lotor has seen before her - before any of them - then it’s one more weakness for the Prince to exploit.

“Shit,” there are too many variables.

“So what,” Matt asks, “you think Lotor’s trying to isolate Keith from the team? What does he possibly stand to gain from that? Keith would never betray Voltron.”

He wouldn’t, Pidge knows that.

He wouldn’t, but if Keith’s hard to read then Lotor’s worse, and she doesn’t know how much of Lotor’s behaviour is a tactical ploy, and how much is simply his personal agenda.

There’s just not enough _data._

 

Or there isn’t until Keith makes a noise that is absolutely sinful, and Pidge instantly locks on to Lotor with the expectation of something lewd only to find-

Softness.

Warmth.

Something so gentle and so outside of the realms of possibility, that she hadn’t even considered it.

 _Lotor doesn’t just like Keith,_ she thinks, looking at Zarkon’s son and heir sitting cross-legged beside a teenage boy from Earth, who is blissfully oblivious as he shoves his face full of alien pastry, _and he doesn’t just want him either._

Prince Lotor, it is becoming abundantly clear, might well be a little bit in love with a Paladin of Voltron.


End file.
